Faculty Book: David C. Brotherton and Luis Barrios

David C. Brotherton and Luis Barrios

Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile
(Columbia University Press, 2011)

The 1996 U.S. Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act has led to the forcible deportation of more than thirty thousand Dominicans from the United States, with little protest or even notice from the public. Deportees suffer greatly when they are torn from their American families and social networks, and they may be unwelcome in their former homeland. Following thousands of Dominican deportees over a seven-year period, Brotherton and Barrios capture their experience and conclude that a simultaneous process of cultural inclusion and socioeconomic exclusion best explains the trajectory of emigration, settlement, and rejection. Combining sociological and criminological reasoning, the authors isolate the forces that motivate immigrants to leave their homeland and then commit crimes in the United States. They relate the modern deportee’s journey to broader theoretical studies of transnationalism, assimilation, and social control. David Brotherton (Assoc. Prof., John Jay) is on the doctoral faculty in criminal justice, sociology, and urban education; Luis Barrios (Prof., John Jay) is on the doctoral faculty in psychology.